Years and years before I became a parent, before triplets were ever even on the radar, an old friend from school was sharing with me about the joys of being a new father. I was skeptical about the whole thing, but I remember his eyes lighting up talking about how parenthood forces a sort of welcome evolution inside of you.
“Before you have kids, you have the luxury of flirting with all kinds of ideas about the person you want to be, what you believe about the world, about politics, about spirituality. You try out different philosophies like shirts in a store, never really committing. But then kids come along and you have to make decisions. ‘What do I really believe? Who is God?’ Because you’ve got these little people looking up at you and they want to know how it all works. You’ve gotta give them something.”
The friend in question was (and still is) a minister in the Midwest and I didn’t have the heart to tell him in that moment that that didn’t sound like such a screaming good time. I like my cynicism. I’m comfortable there. Did I need kids coming in like spiritual wrecking balls, forcing a same-page session on faith and all things unanswerable? Thanks, no, pass.
But, you know, I can’t say he was altogether wrong. And speaking from experience, if having children introduces a sort of God-pressure into your life, having both living and non-living children multiplies that pressure. Twelve years of well-intentioned notes and comments reassuring you about your “angel babies looking down from Heaven” will eventually give pause to even the most bull-headed. Because, seriously, where are my boys? Are they anywhere? “Heaven?” A 7D supercontext?
Or are they just gone?
I have a handful of friends who are in the process of what intellectuals call “deconstructing.” In plain terms, they’re taking the faith assumptions of their youth, unscrewing the bolts, laying out the component parts and picking through them. What’s needed, what’s surplus. Maybe more than that, interrogating whether the machine itself is helpful for anything. Never mind whether any of it’s true, is my faith doing anything good in the world or does it mostly exist to keep itself running?
My wife and I identify ourselves, broadly, with Christianity. We attend a non-denominational church. We pray, we take communion. We even teach Sunday School (in fact, I taught a lesson on Peter and Cornelius this morning). If, at the moment of my death, I find myself filling out a Heaven application at the pearly gates, mine will look something like this:
Religion:
[x] Christianity – Non-denomOn a 1-10 scale, how sure are you that your religion is the one, true religion?
[x] 1Describe in 50 words or less why you should be considered for this position.
– Team-oriented, goal-oriented, problems are opportunities for creativity. Greatest weakness is I sometimes work too hard. Refs attached.
Here’s the dirty truth: I don’t know how it works. I don’t think I’ll ever know, in this life, how it works. And no offense, but if you’re telling me you know beyond all doubt how it all works, I’ll nod and hear you out, but I’ll probably secretly find your surety disingenuous.
So all I have is what makes sense to me. Being honest, that’s all any of us have. Angel babies, apologies, doesn’t make sense. Eternal hellfire for believing the wrong thing based on incomplete information doesn’t make sense. An unending afterlife experience based on choosing the right denomination of the right faith system doesn’t make sense.
So what does?
Kindness. Love. Inclusivity. Forgiveness. Caring for the vulnerable. Sharing what you have.
And here’s where I offend a portion of my constituency: if your path to all of the above doesn’t happen to include a guy who died on a cross 2,000 years ago, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say I think you’re fine.
For some who know and love me, I promise I don’t mean to break your heart. But I have to tell you, June 4, 2011 was a hell of a day. In my commiserations with my deconstructing friends (at least a couple of whom have also experienced a hell of a day), I’ve returned to a raw truth: some have experienced terrific tragedy and some haven’t. If you’ve managed to avoid tragedy, your expectation that everyone should land where you landed on all matters spiritual is a little unfair. Some of us have seen shit you haven’t.
But, again: kindness, love, inclusivity, forgiveness. I don’t need you to say the right thing to me, I just want you to care. Even the Angel Baby People mean well. It’s all good.
Last year I wrote about Job and my much-hoped-for, fingers-crossed, six-kid reunion in the sweet hereafter. It’s my hope that I haven’t seen the last of Rudyard, Desmond and Oscar, that our time apart is a blip compared to our eventual time together. I want it to be true. I want it so much that my brain ejects all other possibilities like Tom Hanks from a volcano. I want it and I choose to believe it.
But, reasonably, I don’t know.
My beliefs have evolved in twelve years and I expect that will continue. I mean, it has to, right? Of course I have to concede that maybe it really is all about angel babies and neverending hosannahs and everything Aunt Dianne ever embroidered on a throw pillow. Maybe that single set of beach footprints was Jesus carrying me all along.
But I don’t know. But maybe. But I don’t know. But maybe.
In 2023, I’m 47 years old and the current state of my personal spiritual evolution is: pending further revelations and/or introspection, I’m choosing to believe in something greater, something better. Something that involves the kindness and the love and the inclusivity and the forgiveness.
Whatever the case, it’s been twelve years since my sons came and left. I love them and miss them. One day we’ll be together again. One day I’ll have it all figured out. One day I’ll find out, once and for all, the truth.
Unless I don’t.
I’ll end with Grant Morrison quoting The Smiths expressing my great, unprovable hope. Peace and love to all.
